Monday, April 23, 2012

"Repeat After Me: Fuck Queen and Country!"

The Queen's diamond jubilee is just six weeks away, and the media will be saturated with sick-makingly sycophantic drivel about what a great woman Elizabeth Windsor supposedly is.

Of course, as anyone with any capacity for logic understands, this is utter rubbish. She is perhaps the very least amongst us, having parasitically leeched billions from the public purse throughout her ridiculously pampered eighty-five years, during which time she has contributed literally nothing to the public good. At a time when the ultra-rich are battering the rest of the population, the passing of six decades since she first sat on a particularly posh chair will be used in an attempt to stun and stupefy us into submission. The spectacle badly needs to be punctured.

In 1977 - the silver jubilee - the Sex Pistols did just that with their cheekily-titled anti-royalty anthemGod Save The Queen. Ever a toady of the establishment, the BBC famously banned the record, and apparently fixed the chart so that it only 'officially' reached number two. Nevertheless, the lyrics and visceral anger seared its way into the minds of millions, and the idea that "There's no future in England's dreaming" resonated with a generation thrown on the scrapheap by the Labour government of James Callaghan.

"I would like to very strongly distance myself from the recent
stories and campaign to push God Save The Queen for the number one
spot. This campaign totally undermines what the Sex Pistols stood for."

What a tosser.

So on to a song which I thing has a much better claim - Repeat (UK) by the Manic Street Preachers. To people who've heard nothing older than perhaps A Design For Life, the Manics are a pleasant enough if sometimes bland outfit. Those people need to hear Repeat from their debut album Generation Terrorists! Like the Pistols' God Save The Queen, it has the power to reach a disaffected generation. The sound is pure punk, and the lyrics are as follows: